U.S. Senators Must Fund Community Needs and Reject Pressure to Sell Out Asylum System for Foreign Military Funding

The Defund Hate campaign demands elected officials reject any additional funding to ICE and CBP and fulfill civic duty of providing for U.S. communities

WASHINGTON – As a bipartisan group of U.S. Senators continue negotiations on President Biden’s supplemental funding request this week, immigration groups and progressive organizations are continuing to urge lawmakers to oppose efforts to add billions of dollars for immigrant detention and border militarization, and safeguard critical asylum protections. Senate Republicans are demanding extreme, lasting immigration policy changes in addition to the supplemental funding that would gut the asylum system as we know it in exchange for foreign military funding.

According to reports, the deal in discussion would effectively implement an asylum ban by creating near-impossible barriers to apply for asylum, and undermine humanitarian and other forms of parole. These permanent changes to asylum, coupled with the funding that is also still on the table for immigration and border enforcement, would have devastating consequences at the border and across neighboring countries, jeopardizing the lives of vulnerable individuals and families seeking safety.

The Defund Hate campaign, a coalition of groups that advocates for decreased funding to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), offered the following statement:

“We urge the U.S. Senate and the White House to reject any proposal that aims to dismantle the country’s current asylum system or expand our cruel enforcement infrastructure. The policy changes sought by Republican lawmakers will endanger the lives and security of immigrants both within and beyond our borders. Additional supplemental funding to ICE and CBP would needlessly increase immigrant detention despite current detention levels already being the highest seen under the Biden administration with approximately 40,000 people forcibly incarcerated in violent and dehumanizing ICE detention. 

The U.S. government already gives ICE and CBP tens of billions of taxpayer dollars a year, and as a campaign, we reject any proposal that provides these agencies additional funding to surveil, detain, deport, and militarize communities. Additional funding would also add over a thousand Border Patrol agents to the vast network of Border Patrol checkpoints located up to 100 miles into the interior, active duty troops, the National Guard, invasive surveillance and military technologies, and hundreds of miles of border wall. We demand that our elected officials immediately reprioritize and fulfill their duty to provide the public services that people desperately need instead of spending money on immigration enforcement and weapons to send abroad. We continue to adamantly reject that a more militarized world with more weapons is a safer one.”

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The #DefundHate campaign, composed of organizations representing directly impacted communities, faith leaders, and civil rights and immigrant rights advocates, is committed to divestment from agencies that tear apart our families and terrorize our communities. For too long, our representatives have said they care about our communities while simultaneously funding aggressive immigration enforcement and deadly immigration jails. They must be held accountable to keep their promises and stand with the immigrant community. We call on our members of Congress to say no and vote against wasting taxpayer dollars on an abusive and deadly immigration enforcement system. Instead, we want our tax dollars used to strengthen our families and communities by investing in education, housing, nutrition and health care programs that provide opportunity and increase well-being.